The Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity is looking for nominations for people to include on a new mural in downtown Burlington that will feature people of color who have been important in Vermont's history.

We've now had over eight straight days with temperatures dropping below zero across the Champlain Valley according to the National Weather Service, and more cold's on the way this weekend: a high of minus 5 degrees.

The Washington County State's Attorney's Office collected donations for a community fund that — in fact — doesn't exist. And in a few cases, charges against individuals were dropped after they made donations to the fund, according to reporting by the Time-Argus.

The U.S. has ended a temporary residency program for almost 60,000 Haitians who had been allowed to legally enter the United States after an earthquake in 2010. The program, called temporary protected status, allows people from nations hit by conflict or natural disaster to remain legally but temporarily in the U.S. for up to 18 months. TPS has often been extended, allowing some people to remain in the U.S. legally for several years.

Public Post, VPR's local reporting project, looks at the people and events making news in towns and cities across the state. We've rounded up a few memorable stories from the past year that still stick out as we wrap up 2017.

A day after President Trump said the Affordable Care Act "has been repealed," officials reported that 8.8 million Americans have signed up for coverage on the federal insurance exchange for 2018 — nearly reaching the 2017 number in half the sign-up time.

That total is far from complete. Enrollment is still open in parts of seven states, including Florida and Texas, that use the federal HealthCare.gov exchange but were affected by hurricanes earlier this year.

A basic cooking technique that’s described in one of Europe’s oldest cookbooks has become the “secret sauce” to Latin American and Puerto Rican cuisine. It’s called sofrito and it’s the flavorful base for traditional Christmas dishes like Roasted Pork Pernil and rice and chicken. WSHU’s Cassandra Basler visited a family in New Haven that supplies the fresh blend of veggies, oil, herbs and spices to New England.

Brian Mitchell’s pretty busy this time of year. He’s got a full time job as a grocer in Windsor, Vermont, and his nights are spent monitoring the 50,000 music-synchronized lights that cover his property.

The day I caught him on the phone, he’d already been working on it for months.

"About April or May I’ll start dabbling with it again, and if I have any projects in mind I’ll start working on those. So it’s a full-year hobby. And then all the programming of the songs, which takes a lot of time."